Eric Holthaus was the original WSJ Weather Journal blogger for 2010 to 2013. He is now the lead meteorologist and weather editor for Weathermob and Quartz. Mr. Holthaus was among the first meteorologists to sound the alarm that Sandy had the potential to be such an intense storm.

The only way I made it through Sandy was by not actually being in New York City. Still, the storm consumed me.

I was in Tucson, Ariz., that week, and — perhaps like many who were within the evacuation zones — found myself handicapped from much else besides following the storm. A year later, I still feel that surreal disconnect.

I later determined that I spent 121 hours that week crunching numbers, reviewing weather charts, considering the impacts, writing for this space, and tweeting the most important developments — which felt like a waterfall at times, coming once every few seconds. It was nearly impossible to step away.

As a scientist, I sometimes think in charts and numbers. A week before landfall, I weighed the odds that the most accurate weather models could simultaneously be pointing toward a scenario meteorologists had theorized but had never witnessed. I waited as updated telemetry data streamed in from the Hurricane Hunters airplanes that were making laps around Sandy’s broad circulation, confirming the storm was the largest and most powerful ever seen north of the Carolinas. I watched the tide gauge at Battery Park in lower Manhattan spring to record levels. These were all emotional moments for me and helped shape the seriousness of my writing and my response.

I shifted into “machine mode” about 48 hours before landfall. My meteorological mind was in overdrive, trying to restrain my astonishment that a worst case scenario was quite literally happening before my eyes — albeit via a computer screen. I had a live radio stream from New York City on in the background as I worked, and the personal interviews hit me with a kind of dissonance: “So, you’re saying this storm is actually real?” New Yorkers carried me through the storm just as much as my weather updates carried them.

For me, watching climate change — which helped boost Sandy’s coastal flooding — is like watching superstorm Sandy in slow motion. It’s clear to see the scientific inevitability should things continue on their present course, but also surreal at times to remember, “Oh yeah, this is the real world.” As a scientist, it’s by remaining grounded in human stories that I’m able to turn numbers into action.